Search Engine Marketing- Get your money's worth

Search Engine Marketing is a digital marketing strategy  used to drive traffic to the website by purchasing the ads on search engines. Unlike Search Engine Optimization, SEM is paid advertising to increase the visibility on the search engine result pages. SEM is highly cost-effective marketing tool as it increases the chance of conversion since the advertisements are displayed to the motivated customers. With customers going online for researching and shopping, SEM has become indispensable. The most popular search platform is Google, followed by Bing and Yahoo.

The starting step in SEM is to select the key words which are suitable for the products and related to the website. Appropriate product advertisement which conveys the right amount of information and which is relevant to the searched keyword must be created. The search engine platform should be chosen properly and a balanced bidding strategy should be for the selected keywords using the allocated budget. 

The crucial part of SEM is to choose the right keywords which are not too broad or too narrow. This can be done only when the marketer understands the target market. Free tools like Key word planner, Google trends can be used  to understand the search pattern of the  target customers, bidding strategy of the competitors. Once the bidding is done, one must focus on improving the quality of the website content, as SEM displays are combination of Bid and the quality score. The ads must have the right information, call to Action and the landing page must be relevant and appealing to increase the conversion rate.Track the SEM results through various measures and change the bidding strategy if  the objectives are not met.

The effectiveness of the SEM can be measured through Impressions : Number of times the ad is appeared on the search result page, Number of clicks on the ad, Cost per click to select the right key words, Conversion rates- Total number of purchases from the SEM redirection, Clicks on the call to Action button, Search rankings.

SEM in B2B marketing has different objective than that of B2C. In B2B case the length of sales cycle is more,  buying process is more complex and the purchases are costly.  Hence SEM can be used to increase the brand awareness and to generate the leads. 

The conversion rates are higher from the SEM leads as the customer searches for information with the intent to purchase. It requires the advertisers to pay only if the the customer clicks on the link provided to the landing page. More visitors will in turn boost the website ranking in the organic search results. SEM is non-intrusive and reaches the right customer at the right time if planned in the right way.

Reference:
Paid search
Search Engine Marketing
Types of SEM